Ruby Lal

This book is an excellent biography of Nur Jahan, one of the most remarkable women in India's history. Ruby Lal starts with the journey her parents made to Al-Hind (there was no India then), their accession to the court, her murder and her marriage to Jahangir.
I think there are some points of query. At one point, she called Jahangir's mother by the name, Jodha Bai when her real name is Harkha Bai. She also mentioned that Nur Jahan was the first woman to issue farmans, whereas other authors mention that Hamdeh Banu Begum also issued farmans.

While she has done an excellent job in explaining her undoubted qualities, she downplays the obvious scheming Nur Jahan did to gain power and to attempt to keep it after Jahangir's death.

However, overall I say this is an excellent book on a worthy Queen about whom we know little.… (mais)

I first encountered Nur Jahan, a seventeenth-century Mughal empress, in historical novels, which either portrayed her as a romantic figure or as a female villain who usurped male power. This biography dispels some these myths and presents a more balanced and nuanced woman, albeit still an incredible woman. The author opens this book with a scene drawn from historical sources of Nur Jahan carrying a musket and killing a tiger while her emperor and husband watches at her side. It's a scene which marks Nur Jahan as a powerful woman and one who came close to fully embodying the role of a monarch. Furthermore, Nur Jahan's journey to becoming the powerful wife of a Mughal emperor is fascinating and tied to the story of her family, which remained influential even after her fall from power. The insights offered in this book peaked my curiosity, and I hope to discover more about Nur Jahan and the other woman of her era.… (mais)

Ruby Lal writes against received histories of "the harem," which portray it as a timeless, universal, den of eroticism entirely separate from the public world of politics. Her work is part of a larger feminist historiographical critique of the "public/private" dichotomy. In her book she examines the changes in the domestic world of the Mughals from the first peripatetic Emperor Babur to the establishment of a much more stable empire with Emperor Akbar. She shows that even when the harem comes to be institutionalized in Akbar's reign, which brings with it a much greater degree of invisibility of women, women continue to be active in the so-called public sphere. In particular she discusses the power wielded by Hamideh Banu Begum, Akbar's mother,and the Royal Women's Hajj organized by Gulbedan Banu Begum, his aunt. She argues that these women should not be marginalized as "exceptional" but rather that the represent the powerful roles occupied by elder royal women.… (mais)